“I am so glad,” declared Mrs. Nailor.  “I knew he must be, of course.  I am sure you would never encourage such an intimacy unless he were?” She smiled herself off, leaving Mrs. Yorke fuming.

“That woman is always sticking pins into people,” she said to herself.  But this pin had stuck fast, and Mrs. Yorke was in quite a panic.

Mrs. Yorke determined to talk to Alice on the first occasion that offered itself; but she would not do it too abruptly.  All that would be needed would be a hint judiciously given.  For surely a girl of such sound sense as Alice, a girl brought up so wisely, could not for a moment think of acting so foolishly.  And really Mrs. Yorke felt that she herself was very fond of this young man.  She might do something for him—­something that should be of use to him in after life.  At first this plan took the form in her mind of getting her husband to give him a place; but she reflected that this would necessitate bringing him where his acquaintance with them might prove inconvenient.  She would aid him in going to college for another year.  This would be a delicate way to discharge the obligation under which his kindness had placed her.

Keith, meantime, was happily ignorant of the plot that was forming against him.  The warm weather was coming, and he knew that before long Mrs. Yorke and Alice would be flitting northward.  However, he would make his hay while the sun shone for him.  So one afternoon Keith had borne Miss Alice off to his favorite haunt, the high rock in the Ridge woods.  He was in unusual spirits; for he had escaped from Mrs. Nailor, who of late had appeared to be rather lying in wait for him.  It was the spot he loved best; for the pines behind him seemed to shut out the rest of the world, and he felt that here he was in some sort nearer to having Alice for his own than anywhere else.  It was here that he had caught that glimpse of her heart which he felt had revealed her to him.

This afternoon he was talking of love and of himself; for what young man who talks of love talks not of himself?  She was dressed in white, and a single red rose that he had given her was stuck in her dress.  He had been reading a poem to her.  It contained a picture of the goddess of love, decked out for “worship without end.”  The book now lay at his side, and he was stretched at her feet.

“If I ever am in love,” he said suddenly, “it will be with a girl who must fill full the measure of my dreams.”  He was looking away through the pine-trees to the sky far beyond; but the soft light in his face came not from that far-off tent of blue.  He was thinking vaguely how much bluer than the sky were her eyes.

“Yes?” Her tone was tender.

“She must be a beauty, of course.”  He gazed at her with that in his eyes which said, as plainly as words could have said it, “You are beautiful.”

But she was looking away, wondering to herself who it might be.